Pardew: Credit To The Lads For The Reaction

Alan Pardew was left surprised at the way his side started the game at West Bromwich Albion as his side found themselves 3-0 down in the first half an hour.

"For the first 30 minutes they swamped us a little bit with aggression and power, and their front two caused us a lot of problems.

"Our front two didn't cause them any problems, although the distribution to them wasn't of any kind of standard, which is unusual for us.

"We normally start games well. Our league form hasn't been good, but the way we started was a shock to me.

"Their goals went in quickly and that knocked our confidence and luckily we got to half-time. In the second half we were a completely different side."

An improved second half performance meant the side came close to getting something out of the game. Connor Wickham netting twice but his strike partner Emmanuel Adebayor was withdrawn from the action after 45 minutes.

"I thought our two strikers were ineffective - I could have taken either off, but looking at Ade I probably looked at managing him properly because we've got a game on Tuesday night,

"There is no way he could have played 90 minutes and been involved for Tuesday night, so we need to look at the structure of the team.

"That looked a lot better for us and that's the way we've had our success, with Yannick Bolasie on the left and Wilfried Zaha on the right, so that was nice to see that starting to come back to us.

"We have not had that for the eight or nine games we've not had a result in the league, but that will give us balance and I think we can gain confidence from the way we've reacted.

"Being 3-0 down at West Brom is a tough agenda with the way we played the first half, so fair credit to the lads for coming out and giving it a go."

The manager felt that his side could have had opportunities to get themselves back in the game if penalty decisions had gone their way. Calls going against Scott Dann and Yannick Bolasie as referee Jonathan Moss waved away appeals from the Palace camp.

"I felt we should have had a penalty at 3-1 which would have given us an earlier goal we got,

"It was a blatant penalty. I asked the referee and he said he was distracted, but the linesman would have seen it.

"Scott's about to head it in and he's been barged in the back, but we never seem to get those calls unfortunately